Tuesday, January 11, 2011

What Does It Mean?

It's been a while since I've been on here, but I'm back and this time I'm not going to leave anyone hanging. My blog is still going to be about sustainability and marketing, but I want to mix it up and make it more interesting and engaging.

So, what does sustainability marketing mean?

To me, from what I've learned, what sustainability marketing is companies who market "green" or "green products" to help utilize what we have left, in order for the next generations to have what we have now and taking into account the triple bottom line (social, ethical, and environmental factors of marketing).They market to consumers not only a product, but the future of the next generations to come.

As trying to find an actual definition of sustainability marketing, it's kind of hard to find. Most definitions that come up are from other bloggers or the term is 'green marketing' instead of sustainability. In doing this, I also found the blog of the authors, Frank-Martin Belz and Ken Peattie, of the book of Sustainability Marketing, that I read last quarter in my Sustainability Marketing class. In the book, he defines sustainability marketing as "an evolution of marketing that blends the mainstream economic and technical perspectives with the emerging concepts of relationship marketing and the social, ethical, environmental and intergenerational perspectives of the sustainable development agenda" (pg. 18).

I believe that what many companies are doing now is not sustainability marketing. What they are doing is 'greenwashing,' saying that their products are "green" and not specifying in fact what is actually 'green' about their product. That's one reason why I think it's going to be hard for those true green companies to market their products because people may not believe them, based on what they've been told before. The FTC did recently come out with new laws and regulations for green marketing.

What does sustainability marketing means to you? Do you think that people are still going to buy sustainable products after all the greenwashing and new regulations companies have to follow?

1 comment:

Mind you I know nothing about marketing but I do know about sustanibility. Sustainability Marketing means to me a connection of the science with the basic needs. Since a vast majority of the general public lack the scientific training to truly understand the underlying factors of Global Climate Change the role of marketing is to bring the information to them. In a simple, easy way they can understand. I may be way off base, but thats just my opinion lol